There were 9,049 entries for this week’s U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills in Southampton, N.Y., the eighth largest number in the 118-year history of the tournament.

Of those, 8,537 golfers started in local qualifying in May. There were 860 competitors, 500 domestic and 360 international, advancing to sectional qualifying last Monday: One day, 36 holes, no guarantees.

Those tournaments produced 74 qualifiers for the 156-player field, to go with various categories of automatic qualifiers.

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David Gazzolo, pride of Riverside Poly and UC Riverside but not yet a household name outside his own community, made it through qualifying. A bunch of PGA Tour regulars, including Billy Horschel, Scott Piercy, Robert Garrigus, Michael Kim, Beau Hossler, Patton Kizzire, Stewart Cink, DJ Trahan, Robert Allenby and Sam Saunders, didn’t.

In a sense, this is a winning lottery ticket, especially for someone who has spent the last couple of years playing Monday qualifiers just to get into events on the Web.com developmental tour.

The trick is what you do with it.

“This could jump-start something later on,” Gazzolo said. “It could give me something to fall back on. If I’m playing bad again, I can tell myself, ‘Dude, you just played the U.S. Open.’ ”

It is a complicated process, assembling the field for the most egalitarian of golf’s majors. There are exemptions for:

• Top 60 status in the Official World Golf Rankings;

• A top 10 finish in last year’s U.S. Open;

• The last 10 Open winners and the last five Masters, British Open and PGA Championship winners;

• The 2017 champions of the U.S. Senior Open, U.S. Amateur, U.S. Junior Amateur, U.S. Mid-Amateur and R&A Amateur;

• The winner of the 2018 European Tour championship, the 30 qualifiers for the PGA Tour’s end-of-season championship, the last three Players Championship winners, and special exemptions as awarded by the USGA.

Those who don’t meet any of those categories have to grind. And Gazzolo, 25, has been doing nothing but grinding since he turned pro in the fall of 2015, after completing his college career at UCR.

“Ever since I’ve known him — he and my oldest son, Eric, have been little buddies forever — he’s always been a really dedicated kid, a hard worker,” said Jeff Cross, the pro at Victoria Club in Riverside, Gazzolo’s home course.

“For the last several years he’s been right there.”

He did win back-to-back California State Opens in 2016 and ’17. He lost in a playoff at the Long Beach Open in 2016. But the developmental tour’s year-end qualifying tournament, or Q-School, has been an unconquerable hurdle so far.

“My first year I actually played well in the pre-qualifying, the first stage and the second stage,” Gazzolo recalled. “Then I made it to the finals … and I don’t think I was mentally ready for the finals. I didn’t play well at all.

“Every time … I’d play well at the beginning of the summer, but by the time Q-School hit, a couple of things would go off.”

No Q-School success means no Web.com Tour card, which leads to the win-or-move-on environment of those Monday qualifying rounds unless he should win a tournament and the right to bypass Mondays. Gazzolo has played six career Web.com events and made one cut, a tie for seventh at the Wichita Open last June.

But maybe he has built some positive momentum.

Gazzolo won a mini-tour event two weeks ago in Albemarle, N.C., eagling the par-4 18th on the final day to win the Biggs Classic by one shot. That got him an exemption into the Web.com event the next week, the Rex Hospital Open in nearby Raleigh. His 2-under 140 for two rounds there missed the cut by a shot; there was a 22-way tie at 139 after 36 holes.

From there, it was on to Chicago for another Monday qualifier. And then …

“I got a call Sunday morning, saying, ‘Hey, do you want to play the U.S. Open sectional in Ohio?’ ” he said.

Gazzolo had played a local qualifier in May at the Classic Club in Palm Desert, lost a playoff to advance out of local qualifying but was classified a first alternate. He figured he had a shot at the Northern California sectional, but he said when he talked to someone at the Southern California Golf Association they suggested his odds were better for being selected at another site.

They were, and it turned out to be quite convenient. From Chicago, it’s a short flight to Dayton, the nearest airport to Springfield.

“I had no expectations, really,” he said. “But I knew I was playing well, so if I could just play smart and make good decisions, I figured I could play well enough to get in.”

He shot 69 in the morning, 69 in the afternoon, and then had to endure a three-man playoff for the last two spots, with a bogey on the first extra hole and a par on the second to secure his berth at Shinnecock Hills.

He will be playing practice rounds early this week with fellow UCR alumnus Brendan Steele, who has been a mentor. Gazzolo said their mutual swing coach, Chris Mayson, gave him this bit of wisdom: “A lot of it is just faith, just belief that you can make it.”

Cross, the teaching pro, put it this way:

“I always tell the kids I’m working with that the ball doesn’t know who’s hitting it, throwing it, catching it,” he said. “I texted David a few minutes ago to say just have fun. Enjoy everything.”

Savor the moment, in other words. The future will be there regardless.

Jim Alexander is an Inland Empire native who started with his hometown newspaper, The Press-Enterprise, longer ago than he cares to admit. He's been a sports columnist off and on since 1992, and a full-time columnist since 2010. Yes, he's opinionated, but no, that's not the only club in his bag. He's covered every major league and major sports beat in Southern California over the years, so not much surprises him any more. (And he and Justin Turner have this in common: Both attended Cal State Fullerton. Jim has no plans to replicate Turner's beard.)